I've seen a number of house rules for altering the dificulty of the game but I was wondering if anyone had any house rules for improving the story behind the game.

I think the game is great and so is the mythos it is based on but the one part of the game that annoys me is how the monsters appear at random, elder things and deep ones shouldn't be coming though the same gate and teaming up to fight the investigators.

Since playing with the black goat of the woods herald, which seperates monsters of a certain dimension symbol into a seperate monster cup at the start of the game, I have been thinking of using seperate piles of monsters for each of the dimensional symbols. When a monster comes through a gate I will draw a monster of a symbol that matches the gate, this means that elder things will always come from the plateau of leng and deep ones will come from r'lyeh. To me this seems to support the mythos that the game is based on.

If I run out of monsters of the correct dimensional symbol I'll close the gate, without removing monsters of the same symbol, if this happens the investigators have missed out closing/sealing the gate.

When a mythos card forces monsters to be spawned I use monsters of a cresent symbol as these represent earthbound monsters.

Does anyone play using a similar rule or use any other custom rules to improve the theme of the game?

mulletcheese said:

mulletcheese said:

It's an interesting idea. Do all of the "Plateau of Leng" gates have the same dimensional symbol, though? I've never really paid that much attention.

I know the board expansions added new dimensions but I'm pretty sure they didn't add new symbols, so unless you're playing base game only (and possibly even then) you could still end up with situations where creatures are coming out of the "wrong" gates.

I'm also not intimate enough with the mythos to know if all the monsters who share a dimensional symbol actually come from the same place. It is possible you'll still get mismatches according to what the mythos says about the origins of different monsters.

mulletcheese said:

We play with the rule Avi mentioned, where a person never gets to read their own encounter, and the reader pauses at any optional condition in the text. This adds a certain level of tension since - unless you have all the cards memorized - you don't know if it's a good idea to read that book or not. Sometimes we do the same for monster fights (ie: not allowed to look at your own monsters, someone else runs them in the fight.) Sometimes not.

We also play gates face-down until someone goes over to it - something which sadly wouldn't play nice with the rule you suggest above.

I like the idea, but you might want to lay out all your monsters to see what's indigenous to where. Once you see that the City of the Great Race and the Great Hall of Celaeno have only 3 different monsters each (plus 1 Mask, and you'll need Dunwich and Kingsport to get all of them), you might want to retool it.

Tibs created a list of Starting Possessions that were appropriate to each Investigator (so someone like the Nun didn't start the game with a Shotgun or similarly ill-suited items). I've used it quite a few times, and it does enhance the role-playing somewhat. It's buried around here or Board Game Geek somewhere.

I've only read the stories written by Lovecraft and from what I can tell the dimensional symbols do match the correct monsters to the correct gates in the base game. I was only assuming that the other monsters were also correctly matched.

Does anyone recommend any of the other authors who write about the mythos?

I like the idea about not starting the game using a nun with a gun, I'll have a look on board game geek.

I'm not as sure about the idea us keeping the gates face down as I like the moving and devouring gates which couldn't be used facedown, this may work if someone was playing the keeper.

The expansion for mansions of madness is set in the witch house, if FFG released more expansions for the other unstable locations in AH I'd love to play a game where the investigators would have to play a scenario of MOM in order to seal a location.

mulletcheese said:

In order for the devouring gates to actually devour anyone they'd have to open on an investigator which would necessitate laying them face up anyway since that character would be drawn into an OW. Moving wouldn't work though.

Getting monsters from the corresponding gate sounds a nice idea, but, what about Crescent monster ? There is no Crescent gate...

The crescent pool could always be the backup to use in case there are no monsters available of the correct type.

mulletcheese said:

He's got the crescent monsters covered.

Having monsters that emerges from their correct location is a neat idea that has been popping up few times. The only difference it really makes (in terms of mechanics) is the benefit you get from closing the gate (that will "always" send back to the cup some of the monsters). It however looks that something I'd like to play test. :-)

Joe Diamond starts with the Private Investigator condition. Jacqueline Fine starts out with the Psychic condition.

Aquatic monsters can only appear at aquatic locations. If an aquatic monster is drawn at a non-aquatic location, return the monster to the cup and draw again.

I don't know about that aquatic rule. Skeletons and Moon-Beasts, for example, aren't known for their aquatic nature (in fact, Moon-Beasts can't swim at all!).

Maybe, when you draw an aquatic monster in a non-aquatic location (and vice-versa), you return it to the bag and draw again, keeping whatever the second monster is?

Also, I plan on updating my Thematic Starting Posessions PDF the moment I get Miskatonic, so that it reflects the new Skills and Relationships. And I have an idea to make the Relationship dealing a little more fitting.

Moon Beasts have aquatic movement but they can't swim?

Maybe if I read more Lovecraft it would make sense. But I doubt it.

I use the rule because I found that it promotes aquatic movement. I'm sick of Deep Ones appearing in the Woods and then never doing anything cool.

You could simply make it so that non-aquatic monsters can't appear in non-aquatic spaces (except for Innsmouth Look victims). That way, anything could still appear in aquatic spaces.

Moon-Beasts have aquatic movement, I assume, because in Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath they travel on galleys. Elder Things and Shoggoths really should have some kind of aquatic movement too, because they actually did live in the oceans.

Tibs said:

Well, the good news is, you're clearly enjoying your honeymoon. We went canoeing in the Everglades for ours. My wallet got stolen and my wife was afraid of being eaten by an alligator. It was cool.

I think there's one too many "nons" in your statement. Right now you're suggesting a rule that zombies can't appear in the graveyard. Do you mean that non-aquatic monsters can't appear in aquatic spaces? But then, anything *couldn't* appear in aquatic spaces. Or maybe you mean that aquatic monsters can't appear in non-aquatic spaces. But that was the rule that I originally suggested, which you weren't too sure about.

Yes, that it what I meant. And I was unsure because I thought you were saying that only aquatic monsters could appear at aquatic spaces.

I could imagine that when R'lyeh manifests, it floods the immediate area, making it permissable to allow aquatic creatures in non-aquatic areas. It may not make sense to see sea monsters lurking under the floorboards of the Witch House, but it's an alternate reality breaking through into our own- that's kind of the point.

I tried grouping the monsters into symbols before but I couldn't get the weighting right. Then again I tried splitting the "crescents" beforehand, instead of just dipping into them as and when. May suggest the idea next game.

Sorry Tibs, I didn't mean to come across as mean. I just thought it was a funny sentence. Congrats on your honeymoon, by the way.

Treguard said:

Good point. Though the purpose of the rule was to create situations in which aquatic monsters could actually move aquatically. Maybe that doesn't count as "theme" exactly. I guess it feels thematic to me when I see aquatic monsters swimming to catch investigators, as opposed to dinking around at the Historical Society.

Nope, you didn't come across as mean at all. It's this internet-posting thing. Timbre is difficult to evaluate.

And, thanks! Groping around Kingsport with soggy shoes will be a lifetime memory.

Another thing to note is that all of the towns (except for Dunwich) are near the sea and near the Miskatonic, so any aquatic monster that appears in them might have just wandered in from a nearby entry point. With Dunwich aquatic monsters you may need to be more creative. Maybe, all monsters appear normally, but aquatic monsters can't appear in Dunwich?

I personally I think it's unthematic to have aquatic monsters in Dunwich. I mean, I get that a gate to R'lyeh could open at the Whateley Farm and release a Deep One or something. It just feels weird if there's a Deep One in Dunwich, but not Innsmouth.

If you don't like gates to R'lyeh opening in Dunwich draw a second mythos card and use that location for the gate, or select another gate from the pile.

I don't mind having the aquatic monsters roaming over Arkham as all of them are capable of moving on land as well as in the sea, Dunwich may be a bit far from the sea though. The problem I have with aquatic monsters is that they don't work well with the base game, this is because none of the street locations are aquatic locations. Once an aquatic monster appears in Arkham there is no way for it to reach water and it may as well be a standard black bordered monster.

If you have both Innsmounth and Kingsport expansions then you will have 2 surplus aquatic tokens, these could be used to mark more Arkham locations as aquatic. I favour the market district streets and the unnamable as these are the closest locations to water and you could argue that a deep one could easily reach the river from here. You could also count the R'yleh gates as aquatic locations, R'yleh exists on Earth and can be reached from the sea as well as through a gate, any deep ones coming through the gate could then go straight out to sea instead of into the streets if an investigator is in an aquatic location.

mulletcheese said:

This sounds intriguing. I seem to recall that Julia made a herald for R'lyeh and aquatic movement. It might have been along those lines.

If you look at the map image in the background of the board you will also notice that east town street location is placed right over a bridge crossing the miskatonic so it would not be unreasonable to assume that could be an aquatic location as well, or rivertown as that name makes a little more sense being aquatic.

Also check out Basatan if you want to ramp up how an aquatic monster works.

avec said:

Yep, Avec, your memory is right :-) Here is the Herald; R'lyeh locations are aquatic locations, as well as Another Time and Another Dimension "locations"; and gate are moving via aquatic movement. Kinda nightmarish, but a lot of fun to play (I hope)